NOAA reports U.S. cooling over last 15 years

The above graph represents the 15 years (180 months) beginning on August 1, 1997 and ending July 30, 2011.

Per the latest NOAA/NCDC U.S. temperature data records, the 12-month period ending July was the 5th coldest July-ending period for the last 15 years. In terms of a single month, July 2011 was the 4th warmest since 1895 (July 1936 was the warmest.)

The per century cooling trend of this period, a minus 3.5°F, took place in spite of the huge warmth produced by two large El Niño events during this 15-year span: 1997-1998 and 2009-2010.

For the 10-year period ending July 2011 (August 1, 2001 thru July 30, 2011 – 120 months), the cooling trend accelerates to a very significant minus 12.4°F per century rate – again, per the updated NOAA/NCDC temperature records.

You load the html listed on that graph, put in the span of time from 1997 to 2011, ask for average temperature for the year and generate it yourself. The graph will generate just as it appears, but no, that graph is not on that page, but at the bottom, you can generate it. The URL that came up when I generated the graph was http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl Does that mean if you try it, it will generate the same graph? Don’t know. I asked for a line graph since that what was shown. Does that help you find it now?

Bet this graph won’t be part of Savior Al’s presentation either. Too bad I am this century’s equivalent of a racist when we consider climate change.

Hey Tom! Not sure if you noticed or not, but that temperature graph is an artifact. The temperatures have been adjusted down for the 1930’s and other warm periods in the first half of the 20th century, and adjusted upwards for the latter half.

So when El Nino years are way above average and La Nina years are slightly above average, you infer cooling when the baseline is the hottest year on record?
Not a single year in the past 15 was below average, not one!
And 2011 is again warmer than average.

The removal of temperature stations at higher latitudes, higher altitudes and rual locations makes it appear as if average temperatures are rising more than they are. Ever heard of UHI?

We now have an urban biased GHCN. UHI can cause temperatures of up to 14F higher than surrounding areas. Even a fifth grader knows that when you remove cooler stations from the network, the average temperature goes up.

Not sure what your comment is saying. If you go to NOAA’s website, inputting the data request yields that graph. It just happens. Realize one thing. That graph is based on the average daily temperature across the entire US. That doesn’t reflect what high temperatures are or what low temperatures are. It takes the average temperature for each 24 hour period across the entire country. The trend line is drawn in on the graph by NOAA, it’s not added. Don’t like the results? Guess you’ll have to devise your own mathematics so the graph will show what YOU want to see.

By the way, don’t mistake the black line of “average temperature” as a baseline. That’s just there to signify that it represents the average temperature. I have to assume the “actual temperature” curve truly represents that these 15 years have been much higher then this average. I believe the black line represents the “average” from 1900 to now, but the trend line represents the trend in temperature since 1997. In other words, the black line is an average for the past century, the red line the temperatures for the past 15 years, the period that supposedly is used to determine climate change, and that the trend line shows what the trend for the past 15 years represents, a period of cooling. This is a bit of “cherry picking,” I suppose, but it is the time frame supposedly used to show climate change.

Final comment here – I hope. If you extend that line further into the past, it will show a positive trend. What I find particularly amusing is the trend line changes in tilt depending on how far you go back. Notice how little the downward slope is for something that represents .47 degrees in change over 15 years. Go to the URL I listed below and move the start point to 1990, as an example, and the trend line will show a sharper rise for .25 degrees per decade change. Now go back to the beginning and set the start point all the way back to 1895, and look at how great the tilt is in the line for an average increase of .12 degrees per decade. If you aren’t looking at the numbers, you would believe the earlier date shows a huge increase in rate of change.

How accurage is NOAA in the first place with measuring stations in areas that bias the the measurements? It is disingenous considering U.S. temperature measurements only go back to 1880 and the Ice Age ended in 1800’s. http://surfacestations.org/

The importance of this graph is the trend, not the whether the actual average temperature fell below the long-term mean during the 15 years. If the trend continues, we should start seeing that in the next 3-6 years, based on an ‘eyeball’ extrapolation.

All this average temperature stuff is nonsense – what does an “average” increase of less than 1 degree C in about 130 years mean ?

There is nothing established about the warming other than CO2 absorbs infrared, increases in temp and reradiates infrared. Any effect from that must be in proportion to its concentration – must be because everything else works that way.

At 0.04% concentration CO2 can produce no more than a modest effect on temperature – even the most radical of the AGW scientists now admit that – they claim the rest will be caused by feedback from water vapour.

Water vapour may turn out to have a positive effect but I doubt it. I don’t know but I do know if I wanted to absorb energy for transport throughout an atmosphere I wouldn’t choose CO2 with its specific heat capacity of less than 1.

I’d choose water with its specific heat capacity of 4 PLUS its latent heat capacity of ~2,500.

Water undergoes phase changes at ambient temperatures – CO2 is a gas at all temperatures found on earth.

Water so obviously moderates our climate I cannot believe people won’t accept the reality. Where is hotter – the beach or the desert? Where is cooler on a clear night – the beach or the desert?

Look at temperature records if you want – Singapore, an island almost on the equator, rarely gets hotter than ~32 C or cooler than ~25 C but receives the most intense solar radiation on the planet because of its location.

Baghdad, at 33 N gets much hotter in summer and much cooler in winter. The winter result is easily expected but the summer one is a bit out – it isn’t even tropical.

Obviously Singapore’s albedo is much higher than Baghdad’s because of the more intense cloud cover. So it receives less energy despite the incoming being the maximum it can be on Earth.

But this surely demonstrates a negative feedback.

Also what is clear is that a lot of incoming solar energy is unavailable to increase the air temperature because of evaporation of water – the humidity in Singapore is very uncomfortable to live with so that everyone has air conditioners.

Imagine a world where the major land masses were aligned along the equator and the largest amount of incoming solar radiation did not fall on water -now that may be hell on Earth.

Appreciate water – it is not only the stuff of life it is also the Earth’s climate control.

When, as seems inevitible, the earth cools down while heading to an ice age say a prayer that enough solar radiation falls on equatorial oceans to keep the thermals currents going, both atmospheric and oceanic.

And yet another great article ! This one plus the other “Abrupt Climate Change for Past 800,000 Years” is all the evidence you need to make the case on Earth’s climate history and current cooling trend. So much for the idea that cranking up our cars causes GW eh ?

Your link shows all data from 1895 to present, which does indeed show a 1.2 F increasing trend. (0.67 C). However, use the graph to show just the period of the last 15 years, and it does confirm a cooling trend. Sorry.

Practical experience is that when I was a kid during the 1970s it was on the cool side. Then, when I was a teen / young man during the 1980s it was undeniably warm. The 1990s dawned warm, and other than the amazing Arctic outbreak of late December 1990 into early Jan 1991, were warm until late 1997. Dramatically, at my location in coastal Nor Cal, on Dec 20, 1997, we had a vast occurrence of snow at sea level (not sticking but still). From 1997 onward, in general it was cool to cold. Winters were average to cold, the summers became shorter and cooler (other than the odd warm spike), onset of climatic autumn advanced toward the Summer Solstice, and, the frequency of low elevation snow events (especially ones late in the season, in some cases after the Vernal Equinox) increased.